Potentially Everything

The Battle Between Freedom and Culture

Books abound on the subject of finding yourself, your identity, your purpose. It’s a modern phenomenon, not knowing you are. One weekend I got an education on why this is.

I have a friend who recently came to the US from Afghanistan on an academic scholarship, just a week before Kabul fell… leaving his wife behind. I won’t keep you in suspense. She’s here now and they are together. After a few months of praying and hoping, we got to meet her.

I’ll call her Zahra and him Aarash. Neither had been outside of Afghanistan before their moves to the US. Zahra had only traveled far from home inside Afghanistan once, with her family of course. One of the things my friend told me earlier on was that he had never been able to take his wife to a restaurant. It wasn’t culturally possible, even before the Taliban came back.

Their visit for lunch at our house was long awaited. When they arrived I realized we were all underdressed for the occasion. It was like royalty had shown up in the Southern Illinois hill country and found real live hillbillies. If you’ve seen Afghan men’s formal wear, that’s what Aarash was wearing, and he made it look good. Zahra wore a long flowing black garment edged with silver and gold lace, small seashells dangling from it. Her head, but not her face, was wrapped in a black hijab which beautifully matched the rest of the outfit. Her hands were tattooed with henna flowers. She was a tall, striking, graceful, and dignified women who struck us all as a princess. Our children’s eyes were glued on her. (They still call her the Afghan princess)

We spoke with Zahra and her husband about her early morning escape from Afghanistan and her impression of America thus far. Both of their experiences had been very good and all the American’s they met on their journeys to Illinois were courteous and surprisingly helpful. (Good job real-live-in-person Americans! You are way better than your social media counterparts!)

Over lunch Zahra asked about customs and traditions in America. Who comes to the birth of a child? Is there a tradition for the days and weeks after the birth? Who helps? Where do families go on Christmas? How long do they stay? What do Americans do when… How do they do… And my answers, we’re always “It depends. Well we usually… I don’t know. I suppose you do whatever you want.”

---

In Afghanistan it is common for an extended family to have a large house with 20 bedrooms, one for each married couple, with unmarried family members sleeping in the central common area. Two, three, or four generations, live under one roof and under the authority of the patriarch and matriarch, who have absolute rule over members of their respective gender, and of course the patriarch over all. Each aunt and uncle have distinct titles denoting their precise place in the family.

There are few choices in this society. Even without the Taliban, within the relatively free two decade bubble provided by NATO troops and democratic government, someone already decided if, when, and where you would go to school, your profession, your spouse, and where you will live. There are no individuals, only families with members.

When a child is born the women of the family take charge of the mother and baby. On the third day the Imam comes and says the prayer into the baby’s ear. On the 6th day, which is called “the 6th day”, because everyone knows what that means, there are special meals, and the menu is already known. Everything is already determined. There is no decision fatigue, as there are no decisions.

The questions Zahra asked often had no good answers. I found myself saying “it depends” a lot. What dawned on me was that in place of a very complex, smothering but comforting culture, America had nothing. Nothing but freedom. Compared to Afghanistan, America has no culture. It has choices, and increasingly nothing but choices.

That isn’t gloating or rejoicing in western liberty. It’s a lament. I can only imagine that Zahra felt a bit like she was in a row boat in the middle of the ocean with zero points of reference. In Afghanistan, her every waking moment was spent in contact with close relations. Every action was highly relational and collective. There was no question who she was. She was Aarash’s wife, so and so’s sister, so and so’s niece, so and so’s sister’s daughter-in-law, and that determined everything. There was no question about what was to be done. The daily rhythms of life were unalterably established in tradition. The special occasions were fixed and known. Now what? An endless stream of choices with people who live alone wearing ugly clothes.

---

I’ve heard that “analysis paralysis” is a pandemic. Two or three generations of Americans have been told from childhood, as I was, that they can be anything they want. That sounds great. But here’s the catch. I once heard theologian R.C. Sproul philosophize that if something is potentially everything, it is actually nothing. It cannot take form without accepting limits. The difference between a house and a pile of materials is limitations. A beautiful ice sculpture and a puddle differ by temperature and adherence to, or lack of, limitations. To be something is to forgo all other possibilities.

We are reaping the bitter fruits of unfettered social freedom at the present. Institutions from the family to the church, civic organizations to government, are weaker than ever. After decades of liberalism hollowing out their purpose and power to mold and shape individuals, the individuals now stand free, formless, and void. (Here I go channeling Yuval Levin again. I can’t help it.)

---

But Aarash and Zahra would not advise adopting the stiflingly strict cultural life of Afhganistan either. I’ve talked about this stuff with Aarash a lot. “If America is all about the individual, Afghanistan is the opposite. You have no choices. There are no individuals. It isn’t good either.” It isn’t just being in a marriage where two lives must conform to each other and then the 2.4 children. Each man is under the thumb of his older relatives, ALL the time. And if you are a married woman, you are under the thumb of your husband’s relatives, ALL the time. 

Christian cultures, of which there are many, are all somewhere between the modern West and Afghanistan. But generally, in the West, they lean too close to their secular surroundings. I cannot give a full-orbed prescription of a Christian principle of culture and family. But perhaps I can suggest two guiding principles, negative and positive that will keep us out of the ditches of lost individualism and oppressive familial collectivism.

Firstly, we must recognize just how odd modern Western culture is in history, and even the global present. We also need to realize that what passes for “culture” in the West is really “anti-culture,” as Anthony Esolen wrote, and Carl Trueman explains. Culture is received. It is passed down. Our present pop-culture is simply an ongoing revolution bent on the downfall of all cultures; the rejecting of definition, of limitation, of rules, of labels, and ultimately any identity whatsoever. Identity is limitation. We need to conform to something. That is what culture is. It is a people commonly conforming to an authoritative tradition and each other. We need culture.

Secondly, correcting the extremes of some traditional cultures, is the institution of the church. Christianity should level and supersede cultures without obliterating them. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:28.

From the expectations we place on children to the clothes we wear, we are building, or tearing down a culture. We must build a culture, a culture which makes demands, defines for us our special shade of beauty, shapes and names us, and yet one which not only has room for, but safeguards freedom.

If we eschew all rules, definitions, and limitations, we will be lost. But not only lost. A sea of formless individuals will eventually be scooped up and plopped into a synthetic mold of totalitarianism by the first worthy strongman, and likely, they won’t care. They’ll be happy for someone to give them the identity and purpose they never had.